Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to cloud computing, and more specifically to virtual machine (VM) migration from switched fabric based computing system to external systems.
Related Art
Computing systems are often implemented to contain nodes interconnected by switched fabrics. A node may contain computational and/or storage resources. A switched fabric relies on point-to-point connection between each pair of input and output ports, for providing the switching operation.
Thus, in a common configuration, each node is coupled to one of the ports of the fabric, and the fabric couples one port to another by a corresponding point-to-point connection, as required for transfer of packets between the corresponding nodes. The switched fabric may be implemented using structures such as cross-bars, banyan switches, etc. InfiniBand (IB) technology based computing system is an example of such a computing system.
Virtual machines (VMs) may be provided within each of the computing nodes in an IB fabric. A VM is a self-contained operating environment that operates as if it were a separate machine, i.e., a separate computer. Virtual machines may be hosted in the computing nodes of an IB fabric based computing system to provide multiple instances of the same or different operating system(s) for execution of respective sets of applications.
It is often necessary to migrate VMs (e.g., for efficient allocation of computing resources) from one computing node to another. Migration refers to movement of a VM from a source computing node to a target computing node for reasons such as load balancing, etc., while providing continued computational/storage resources and data connectivity (post-migration) to/from applications already executing in the VM after the migration.
Migration typically entails hosting the target computer node with an image of the migrating VM, transporting various state-information of applications and other software components to the operational image, and ceasing the execution of the VM on the source computer node. Often such migration is within the same switched fabric based computing system in that both the source and target nodes are contained in the computing system.
However, it may be desirable to migrate VMs to external systems also for reasons such as scalability, ability to meet requirements during peak demand, cost-efficiencies, etc. Aspects of the present disclosure provide VM migration from switched fabric based computing system to external systems, as described below with examples.
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